The Nature of Legislative Intent

Richard Ekins

Defends a robust, original account of the nature and purpose of legislative intent, refuting arguments that the concept is illusory and useless

Grounded in contemporary work on the philosophy of group agency, applying general philosophical insights to the specific problems of legislatures in legal and political theory

Clarifies the role of legislative intent in statutory interpretation, a central problem for academic lawyers thinking about the role and democratic legitimacy of the courts

The Nature of Legislative Intent

Richard Ekins

Description

Are legislatures able to form and act on intentions? The question matters because the interpretation of statutes is often thought to centre on the intention of the legislature and because the way in which the legislature acts is relevant to the authority it does or should enjoy. Many scholars argue that legislative intent is a fiction: the legislative assembly is a large, diverse group rather than a single person and it seems a mystery how the intentions of the individual legislators might somehow add up to a coherent group intention.

This book argues that in enacting a statute the well-formed legislature forms and acts on a detailed intention, which is the legislative intent. The foundation of the argument is an analysis of how the members of purposive groups act together by way of common plans, sometimes forming complex group agents. The book extends this analysis to the legislature, considering what it is to legislate and how members of the assembly cooperate to legislate. The book argues that to legislate is to choose to change the law for some reason: the well-formed legislature has the capacity to consider what should be done and to act to that end. This argument is supported by reflection on the centrality of intention to the nature of language use. The book then explains in detail how members of the assembly form and act on joint intentions, which do not reduce to the intentions of each member, before outlining some implications of this account for the practice of statutory interpretation.

Developing a robust account of the nature and importance of legislative intention, the book represents a significant contribution to the literature on deliberative democracy that will be of interest to all those thinking about legal interpretation and constitutional theory.

The Nature of Legislative Intent

Richard Ekins

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Sceptical Arguments3. Joint Intention and Group Agency4. Legislating Without Reasoning5. What It Is to Legislate6. The Legislative Assembly7. Language Use and Intention8. The Nature of Legislative Intent9. Intentions in Interpretation

The Nature of Legislative Intent

Richard Ekins

Author Information

Richard Ekins, Tutorial Fellow in Law, St. John's College, Oxford

Professor Richard Ekins is a Tutorial Fellow in Law at St John's College. He received his BA, LLB (Hons) and BA (Hons) degrees from The University of Auckland, before going on to read for the BCL, MPhil and DPhil at Oxford. He has worked as a Judge's Clerk at the High Court of New Zealand at Auckland, a Lecturer at Balliol College, and a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Auckland.